Not a joke: I was best friends with the grandson of the Nazi SS Commander found in Minneapolis for 15 years.

So I definitely didn't expect to be writing a blog entry like this, even 48 hours ago. That was, of course, until I got that fateful text message from an equally gleeful mutual friend, that says "Nazi Commander found in Mpls is T's GRANDPA!!"

The long story short, she was right. I had eaten dinner with Nazi SS Commander Michael Karkoc before. I've been drunk with the de-facto family spokesperson and raving, delusional, public spotlight magnet, Andriy too many times to count. Done coke with his other son, my friend's father. Attended weddings with him. Been present for family gatherings of all kinds. Its funny, but it kind of makes a perfect sense if you know the family. Each male generation is sort of socipathic and  completely out of touch with humanity in a slightly different way then the former, and often in ways that could literally leave a person, even one with normally good insight into people's baseline character, as I'd like to think I have, totally fooled. 

My friend, we'll just call him T so that his name isn't out there, was totally a manipulative, charming snake, but it took me well more then a decade to realize it. I really didn't see it. T's dad was a completely selfish, heartless a-hole. You may have seen him on ABC Nightly News as the man yelling"Get out of here! No! Get out of here!" at the camera man as he kicked them off the property at his father's residence in Mpls, 24 scant hours after the news broke.....

But we didn't know jack about the family Patriarch. Well, now we do, and it all makes perfect sense. Its surreal, being so close to a family at the center of international news and attention, and yet, because of a falling out a few years back where I finally told him what I thought and what I'd realized but hadn't seen before, instead of being there to share in their pain and misery under scrutiny, I am able to laugh. 

A good friend of mine thinks the message  that I sent T yesterday might be one of the best of all time. I haven't spoke with T in any capacity in around a year, and after the news exploded, he got a text from me that just read: "Slow News Day...."

So that is kind of where I am at with all of this. MAYBE More to come on the Nazi War Criminal SS Commander who I have had dinner with and drank wine with, and sat next to......